Saturday, May 13, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Wisteria, and the celebrated 18thc American Wüster family for whom it is named.
• Painting Persepolis: Sir Robert Ker Porter's drawings from his 1820s travels.
• Dolley Madison's Wednesday Squeezes.
• Searchable and free: 18thc and 19thc cookbooks online.
• Why people once loved linoleum.
• How snakes have been used both as symbols of American political unity and treachery.
• Why are there so many 17thc paintings of monkeys getting drunk?
• "Delightfully creepy" Roseland Cottage and sixteen other pink-painted architectural wonders.
• Image: Spectacular 1920s evening dress sparkling with glass beads and rhinestones.
• "The Queen's big belly": the phantom pregnancy of Mary I.
• Imperfect pages in a medieval manuscript.
• Captive history at the Wayne County Jail in Lyons, NY.
• George Eliot: is this a rediscovered portrait of the author as a young woman?
• Margaret Fuller was America's first feminist, first female critic, and first woman foreign correspondent - and known for drowning horrifically in a shipwreck only 50 yards from shore while bystanders watched.
• Voltaire anecdotes.
• Video: How amazing does Rievaulx Abbey look from the air?
• History hunt: what lies in a tangle of brush beneath the George Washington Bridge?
• The mysterious marriages of Thomas Nelson.
• Pineapples, guns, and wine: the forgotten heroine of Louisbourg.
• Image: A cross-stitched picture of roses worked by author Charlotte Brontë.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.